Only Silence Remains
by screaming-poetically
Summary: She knows that this is wrong, but it's all about feeling alive. Bill/Hermione.


**Title:** Only Silence Remains  
**Pairing:** Bill/Hermione.  
**Rating: **FRT.  
**Word count: **1, 723.  
**Warnings:** Spoilers for DH.  
**Prompt:** Put your iTunes on shuffle, and write a drabble based on each of the first ten songs that play.  
**Summary:** She knows that this is wrong, but it's all about feeling alive.  
**Disclaimer: **The names of all characters contained herein are the property of JK Rowling. No infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.

1. One More Night – Stars  
Shell Cottage is silent, and Hermione slips out of her room. She can't sleep, for obvious reasons. Whenever she closes her eyes, she sees Bellatrix, and she hears her own screams in her ears. She can't bear it. She thinks that maybe she'll go down to the kitchen, make some tea, and worry in the candlelight.

She gets to the landing and Bill is there. They stare at each other for a moment before he backs her silently against the wall. She knows that this is wrong, she can feel it, but she doesn't object when Bill kisses her fiercely, nor does she object when she feels his hand push up the soft cotton material of her nightgown.

They move further into the shadows and he lifts her up against him, fumbling to hold her up and to release himself from his trousers. She stifles a gasp as he enters her swiftly, her hands grasping at his shoulders as he moves within her. He presses open-mouthed kisses to the soft skin of her neck – he licks her clavicles – he bites the top of her breasts –

She knows this is wrong but it's all about feeling alive.

2. Thank You for the Music – ABBA  
Hermione wonders if it's something twisted and crooked within her that makes her want to actually thank Bill Weasley for fucking her atop the stair landing at Shell Cottage. It really made her realize that if she could feel that much, if she could – then there was something worth fighting for, because someday… Someday she could have that again, even if it wasn't with him.

She hasn't had a chance to talk to him since she left with Harry and Ron, not since the final battle, and after all of the death and destruction she's not quite sure that she wants to, but one day she sees him walking alone with Charlie and she almost passes him before she turns around and says, "Bill!"

He looks at her curiously.

"Thank you," she says. "For… Well. Thank you."

He nods, and she watches him walk away, waving off Charlie's queries.

3. You're a Wolf – Sea Wolf  
Bill doesn't know what it was that made him fuck Hermione in his own house, only a few rooms away from his wife. Was she pregnant then? He can't be sure. He's not sure he wants to be.

He thinks that maybe he fucked Hermione because she's beautiful and she looked so broken after being tortured by Bellatrix, he just wanted to make her feel whole again. He just wanted to make her feel alive, and maybe he wanted to feel that too.

Maybe he still wants it. He loves Fleur but in those moments when he's alone and it's silent in the house they share, he knows that he feels trapped.

4. Counting Blue Cars – Dishwalla  
Everyone is out of the Burrow except for Bill, Hermione, and baby Victoire. This, Hermione thinks, does not bode well. She knows that the sexual tension between her and the oldest Weasley son hasn't completely burned out. She knows that he knows, too.

Victoire is sleeping in Ginny's room when Bill comes to stand behind her as she cleans dishes by hand in the kitchen sink. His hands slide over hers in the water as he presses a kiss to the soft skin of her neck.

"Hermione…" he whispers. "Tell me to stop. Tell me…"

Instead, even though she knows that she's doing wrong not just by Fleur and Ron but also by herself and everyone she knows, she sighs Bill's name and leans back against him. He groans and minutes later they're fucking in the upstairs room he used to share with Charlie when he lived back at the Burrow. She writhes beneath him, her hands tangled in his long red hair.

He spills inside of her, giving a strangled cry, and collapses on top of her. He knows that this needs to stop, but he can't for the life of him want it to.

5. Taller Children – Elizabeth & The Catapult  
"Sometimes," Hermione says carefully to Ginny, "we never move past the stage we were at as children, where it was all about us and we only acted on impulses."

Ginny twists her engagement ring on her finger and raises an eyebrow. "Mione, I'm afraid I don't entirely know what you mean."

Hermione bites her lip and tugs on a lock of hair that has come loose from the bun she put her hair up in. "What I mean, Gin, is that sometimes people don't grow up, not really. Sometimes people make bad decisions."

Ginny smiles and covers Hermione's hand with her own. "Everyone makes bad decisions, Hermione."

She takes a deep breath and makes the effort to smile at her friend. She doesn't bother to explain what her bad decision is.

6. Jesus (Don't Touch My Baby) – Ryan Adams  
Bill is making love to Fleur one night when he realizes that he's thinking of Hermione. Instead of smooth blonde hair he's thinking of wild brunette locks. Instead of clear blue eyes looking into his, deep brown ones meet his own. Instead of a thin body, a curvy one moves beneath his own –

He rolls off of Fleur and sits on the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes as if to clear them of a vision.

"Blimey fuck," he says thickly.

"Bill?" asks Fleur, her hand moving to his bare shoulder. "What are you thinking of?"

He turns to look at his wife, lying in bed looking at him with concern in her eyes. She's bare-breasted and wanton, her blue eyes no longer clear but hazy with lust and need. Those eyes used to drive him crazy. Now he's thinking of his brother's best friend. Fuck. He fakes a smile and slides back into bed beside his wife, his hand sliding to grip her waist.

"Nothing, Fleur. Nothing except you and I."

7. Glad – Tyler Hilton  
Things are finally going right for Ron and Hermione. They aren't fighting like they used to, and they kiss and slide into bed with one another as if they were meant for each other. And maybe they were, Hermione reflects. She's happy with Ron, perhaps happier than she has any right to be, considering the fact that she has slept with his older brother on more than one occasion.

She loves Ron, certainly. She loves him very much, and what they have is perfect in ways that she never even dreamt of. She could make a life with him, a family, a home. She knows this.

But she can't forget what happened with Bill any more than she can forget how to breathe, or the look on George's face when he heard that Fred had died. There are some things that she can never forget.

She hasn't seen Bill all that much, even though she's been over the Burrow an extraordinary amount. Ginny says that he's been avoiding his mum's owls, and she thinks that maybe it has to do with her.

Ron asks her to marry him one day nearly a year after the final battle, and she says yes. She's glad.

8. Uncertainty – The Fray  
Bill has never been the type of bloke to doubt the decisions he makes, and he knows this. But for the first time since he married Fleur, he doubts whether or not he made the right decision. And it has nothing to do with her, because Fleur is a wonderful woman, a talented witch, and any bloke would be lucky beyond his wildest dreams to have her, and he certainly is. It's all him.

Ron and Hermione are getting married in a matter of hours, and he knows it's not his place but he wants to hold her and kiss her just once more, and Bill's pretty sure that he's fallen at least a little bit in love with her.

He watches the door to Ginny's room until he sees everyone leave except for Hermione and then he sneaks in. She looks at him for a moment, and he looks at her, and then she opens her arms to him and before he knows it he's in her embrace.

"No touching," she whispers, and he nods but kisses her anyway.

He'll hold on until there's nothing left.

9. Bad for Me – Danielle Peck  
She understands that Bill has fallen in love with her, because she feels that same, but they just can't do this. He's married and she's about to marry his little brother, and they just can't. They both know it, and perhaps that's the worst part.

"You look wonderful," he says at length.

She smiles. "Thank you, Bill."

He tries to smile but finds that he can't. "If I had met you before Fleur—"

Hermione looks at him curiously. "You did. You just fell in love with her before you fell in love with me, and now… We both have to live with that."

Bill looks down at the floor, dejected. "I wish we didn't have to," he mutters.

"And so do I," she replies gently.

Three hours later, and Hermione Granger is now Mrs. Hermione Weasley, and she dances with her brothers-in-law, and already she's learning to live with the choices that she's made.

10. The Point Sometimes – Gregory and the Hawk  
Nothing lasts forever, Hermione thinks, except for this.

She's been married to Ron now for six years, and she's deliriously happy. She has a child, and more on the way if she has her way, which she usually does, she thinks smugly. Deliriously happy, except for the moments when she's alone and she has the time to think about what she shared with Bill, and what she could have had. It was just that the time was wrong, she thinks, and she takes a breath and puts those feelings in a box behind her heart.

Bill will come by with Fleur and their children, and he'll put a hand on her shoulder or kiss her on the cheek or hug her, and it will always last a moment too long. It's enough, and she's grateful for it.

She meets his eye over dinner, and that lasts a moment longer than it should as well, and she knows that he's grateful too.


End file.
